Beads are, looking at the material from graves, an appreciated object among Viking Age women. Also the men appreciated these things, at least if you are to believe the Arabic Writer Ibn Fadlan, who after his meeting with the Northmen, concluded that "the most valuable jewellery among them are green beads made of the same kind of green ceramic that they have on their ships. They pay a lot for them; they give one dirham for a single bead. They make necklaces out of them for their women".

The beads are mostly made of glass and in many different forms. For long time, the well-decorated and complicated beads were thought to be imported from some distant bead-making centre. But with the excavation at Ribe in Denmark and other places, not at least Fröjel, there is clear evidence that beads of the most complicated forms were made at different places in Scandinavia during Viking Age.

One exception from this is probably facetted or rounded beads of Cornelia. Earlier it was also thought that beads of rock crystal were imported, but the evidence from Fröjel is very clear on this point, they were at least made on Gotland, even if they might have been also imported. The area of origin for this kind of beads is probably Caucasus. One can follow the traces of these beads, as well as of raw material, along the Russian rivers to the Baltic Sea.

Beads were also made of other material, like shells, amber, stone, bronze and silver threads. A specific kind of bead is so called rosary beads; a kind of beads made mostly of bone and used in connection to Christian believes.

At Fröjel, we have found in all about 500 beads, mostly from the settlement area and mainly made of glass. But we have also found several half-finished beads, pointing to the fact that beads were manufactured at the site. As said above, we have clear evidence today that they people at Fröjel also manufactured rock crystal beads. We can see that from several pieces of raw material as well as half-finished beads.

The gallery of beads from Fröjel are sorted in two categories; beads from graves and beads from the settlement area. The beads from the graves are coming from two different cemeteries; one pagan from 9th and 10th century, and one from an early Christian cemetery, dated to the 11th and 12th century.

Most of the beads are though coming from the settlement, and they can be dated mainly to late Viking Age, meaning 10th to 12th centuries. Marie Östberg made all drawings and Dan Carlsson has taken the photos.